


five times jane carter said no, and one time she said yes

by andibeth82



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies), Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Mission Fic, Sassy Brandt is sassy over comms, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 12:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4137168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You,” Brandt says slowly, as if he’s trying to make her understand what he’s saying. “Being a team leader again. I know you were before. Ever thought about it?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	five times jane carter said no, and one time she said yes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



> I was initially a little worried about how I would pull off writing a fandom that I wanted to write, but didn't have any concrete ideas for. Your letter gave me a lot of things to think about, so I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Huge, huge thanks to **geckoholic** for beta, and for talking me out of possibly defaulting when I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to chart a story. (The worst thing I ever forced you to do was rewatch this film with me, right?) It all came together because of you.

**1.**

 

She’s fifteen and her dad takes her to the gun range -- she’s fifteen and her mother asks her if she wants to go get a manicure instead.

“No,” says Jane, and she stares defiantly at the man behind the counter, who is holding out a rifle. She extends both her hands.

“I want to shoot.”

 

**2.**

 

The first lesson Jane learns is _stay focused_.

“Stay focused,” her training supervisor says as she watches the man in front of her. He’s moving slowly, but Jane can feel the way her insides curl and recognizes what that means, the fight or flight instinct that’s been ingrained in her for as long as she can remember. “He knows what he’s doing.”

Jane breathes out once, blinking slowly. _Trust_. _Focus_.

“Take your shot, Jane.”

Her finger wraps around the trigger, nerve endings vibrating from anxiousness and a little bit of anticipation and some feeling she can’t quite place. She had wanted to shoot. She had _said_ she would shoot. She’s supposed to shoot. But the man is shifting his eyes ever so slightly and it causes her to narrow her own gaze, dropping her arm.

“No.” She turns around and meets her supervisor’s face. It’s unchanging and stern, but there’s a noticeable shift in emotion that she can read from a mile away.

“No?”

“No,” Jane confirms. As if to make her point, she throws the gun to the floor and fights the urge to cringe as it clatters loudly in the otherwise quiet room.

“Those are your orders,” her supervisor says in a hard voice. “To take your shot.”

“He’s not a kill mission,” Jane says, raising her voice but keeping it steady, not breaking eye contact. “I can tell he’s lying. He’s not the hostage you told me he was, and if you give him five seconds to speak, he can prove it.”

Her supervisor doesn’t answer, and for a long moment, there’s a stand-off so tense it makes her ears ring, even in the silence. And then he steps forward, raises his own gun, and levels it at her head. Jane doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, not even when she hears the safety click off.

“Pass, Carter.”

 

**3.**

 

The thing about training, Jane realizes, is that they lie.

She’s only been a field agent for a month, but she quickly learns that what they show you in private is nowhere near what you can expect out in what everyone jokingly calls “the real world.” Jane’s competent, and she follows orders, but that doesn’t mean her days don’t end with close calls and bruises and trips to the medical bay to get stitches.

(The trick to not getting shot, to not dying, she realizes the more she does this job, is to _not_ follow orders, and to be just a little more reckless than her team leader would like.)

“I don’t understand,” says Hannaway one day when they’re getting coffee during a work break, on a week that has their team grounded. Jane purses her lips as she digs around for her credit card.

“Don’t understand what?”

“What you do when you go home after work,” Hannaway says pointedly, and she carefully averts her eyes.

“What most people do, I guess. Read. Eat. Sleep.” She slides her card across the counter as she hands him a latte. “Why are you so interested in my private life?”

“No reason,” Hannaway says smoothly, accepting his drink. “Just trying to get to know you better, that’s all. It normally takes awhile for people to get integrated here.”

“You’ll know me well soon enough,” Jane says a little tightly, turning away from the counter. She clutches her coffee, anticipating the words before they hit her ears.

“If you ever want to get dinner or something...you know, just to get to know each other outside of shooting bad guys...let me know. We can arrange for a night off.”

Jane swallows heavily and offers a small smile. She _is_ interested, and she does want to. But he’s nice, and she’s professional, and there’s so much of herself that she still doesn’t feel comfortable opening up about, and also, she’s got a report to write, and so --

“If it’s okay, I’d like to take a rain check on dinner,” she responds lightly. “I’m more of a breakfast type of girl, anyway.”

 

**4.**

 

From the beginning, the job is a total mess.

She misses her rendezvous point -- that’s problem number one and the worst part is, she knows it’s her fault. Problem number two, however, is that she’s currently out of bullets in her gun, her back-up gun has been lost in the fight, and her knife is currently in the hand of her attacker.

“Fall back!” Ethan yells over the comm unit embedded in her ear and she’s annoyed at first because this is _her_ mission, this is _her_ time to be team leader. Ethan was supposed to be on the sidelines more than anything else -- they were still new at this whole working together thing, this whole getting to know each other thing, and he was only supposed to offer help or step in if things took a wrong turn.

Except he’s not stepping in. He’s holed up in a van somewhere close enough to get to her if he needs to, but otherwise, he’s letting her do all the work. And while she can still handle herself _just fine_ , she’s halfway between pissed and relieved at the whole situation. Jane makes the call before she even thinks about it, even though she instinctively knows that engaging a target with no advantage is never a good idea unless you’re completely confident in your back-up...or have a hell of a lot of it.

(On the other hand, it’s the biggest form of “fuck you” and “no” that she can offer.)

“ _Fall back, Carter_.”

The man who had previously confiscated her knife comes at her again, and she sees his reflection in the broken mirror she’s standing in front of. Jane ducks, avoiding his blow, and instead kicks out, taking him down at the knees. She twists to the side as his arm shoots up and manages to get her face out of the way but not her shoulder, and can’t help the yell that tears from her throat as he opens a gash on her forearm.

Seconds later, there’s a loud crack and then the man is dead weight on her. Ethan is standing over her with his own gun, breathing hard.

“Shouldn’t have gone in,” Ethan says, but he’s smiling despite the carnage, in a way that Jane knows means he’s _somewhat_ proud of her. He kicks the dead man to the side and holsters his gun, helping Jane up by her good arm.

“Thanks,” she says, even though she knows she’s directly disobeyed him. “How did you know?”

“To come save you?” Ethan shrugs. “I had an instinct. And for the record, because I know you will, don’t beat yourself up for your decisions, okay?” He helps her walk out of the room slowly. “I get that you have trust issues.”

“Trust issues have nothing to do with it,” Jane responds sharply, except they have everything to do with it, and she knows Ethan isn’t dumb enough to believe her. As it is, he sighs loudly, a sound rooted in frustration.

“Let me tell you something. Missing the rendezvous was a mistake, but then you did what any good agent would do. You said no. You made an instinctual decision.” He pauses, looking her up and down. “More often than not, that will save your ass in the end.”

“Except when you make a bad decision,” Jane says, thinking of Moreau. Ethan makes a face.

“That op was a shit show, and you acted out of self-defense. Any other agent would have done the same. In general, disobeying orders shows quick decision making...it was a good run, Carter.”

Jane lets the words wash over her as she nods in thanks, and he leads her back towards the van where she knows he’ll be able to patch her up.

“Now, run down the rest of the mission,” Ethan says confidently as he starts bandaging her arm. There’s something about the way he finishes the sentence that lets Jane know he won’t return to the conversation, so she sits up a little straighter and starts to talk.

 

**5.**

 

“There’s no ‘I’ in team.”

“Excuse me?” Jane looks up from the report she’s reading, brow furrowed, and Brandt meets her eyes.

“This crossword,” he says after a moment, gesturing to the paper on his lap “That’s the clue. _There’s no ‘I’ in team_.”

“Well, there’s not,” Jane says, leaning back and rubbing her eyes. The quiet hum of the plane reverberates through her seat, like a massage chair. “Unless you’re Ethan, apparently.”

“Give the guy a break,” says Brandt. “He gets one weekend with Julia, and he should be allowed off the grid.”

“Oh, he’s allowed,” says Jane dryly, reaching for her glasses. “But I’m also not convinced that he’s not getting himself into trouble that he’d never admit to.”

“Mmmm.” Brandt moves his jaw back and forth as he marks up his paper. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” There’s another round of silence while he goes back to his puzzle and Jane goes back to her reports.

“I’d let you lead a team.”

Jane’s head snaps forward, her eyebrows shooting up at the comment. “Excuse me?”

“You,” Brandt says slowly, as if he’s trying to make her understand what he’s saying. “Being a team leader again. I know you were before. Ever thought about it?”

Jane hesitates, because technically, she has thought about it, though she would probably never tell anyone. In a world where their lives depended on walking the thinnest line between secret keeping and brutal honesty, that was a thought she had locked and stored away for herself. It was a thought that possibly only Ethan knew, a secret wish to one day go back to a leadership role.

“Sort of,” she hedges carefully, giving him a look. “Where is this coming from, Brandt?”

“Who said it was coming from anywhere?” He waves his pencil around. “Just making an observation based on what I’ve seen in the few missions since we’ve been back. You’re more than competent.”

“I...thanks,” Jane says, unable to find the right words for a response. She reaches for the glass of liquor she’d previously poured before they had taken off. “But I don’t know if I want to be team leader again anytime soon.”

“No one’s asking you to,” says Brandt. “Like I said -- just an observation.” He smiles in a way that makes her insides twist, and Jane quickly looks down as her face grows warm.

“Taking Back Sunday.”

“Huh?”

“That’s the answer to your crossword,” Jane says with a nod. “Taking Back Sunday. It’s the band who sang that lyric.”

Brandt looks down and then laughs once, shortly.

“You know what, Carter? Team leader or not, I’m keeping you around.”

 

**+1**

 

Sri Lanka, in the summer, is a terrible place for a mission.

For one, it’s hot. For another, it’s crowded. For _another_ , there are too many tourists that stumble around with overfilled bags of souvenirs, looking at maps and not entirely at where they’re going, which makes for even more chaos. And then there’s the fact that Ethan is making all of them wear the most uncomfortable clothing, with Brandt faring the worst in a full, heavy suit.

“Hey, you said next time, you wanted to seduce the rich guy,” Jane says into the comm as she watches him twitch uncomfortably, trying to work the sweat out of his shirt.

“Yeah,” Brandt mutters, his lips barely moving. “And when I said that, I didn’t mean I wanted to do it in ninety degree weather.”

Jane snorts quietly, putting her elbows on the small standing table that she’s taken up residence at, pushing back a stray hair.

“I’m wearing a dress that feels like it’s ten sizes too tight, so I don’t think you’re the only one that’s grumpy at this shindig,” she says while smiling at another well-dressed partygoer. Out of all the places they could have gone for a mission, it honestly wasn’t the most terrible. The mark, well, he was going to be a challenge, as wealthy assassins usually were. But the outdoor party at the mansion on the cliff, overlooking the city’s most glorious landscape, well…

Well, the view is so good that Jane can almost forgive the sweltering heat and the fact that Ethan had chosen her a dress which was definitely tighter than she preferred it to be.

“Guy to your left, switching out a drink,” Jane says as her eyes roam towards the back of the room, then narrow. “Ten o’clock.”

“Got it,” Brandt replies. She can hear the sound of ice clinking in a glass, a shot being knocked back, and finds herself wondering if it’s the standard brandy he likes when he does these type of things, or something else entirely. “I’m going in.”

“Watch your six,” she cautions, adjusting her position. “Once you get inside, I don’t have a clear shot on you.”

“Yes, but I do. I absolutely do,” Benji fumbles over another channel and Jane sighs quietly. She’d never _not_ want Benji along on a mission because that in itself was considered suicide. But sometimes, she forgets that all her conversations are shared between more than one person and it unnerves her, especially when Brandt starts dropping his more witty comments, as he’d been prone to do recently.

“Just watch your six,” she repeats, taking a champagne flute from a passing waiter and downing it. “I’m going to make the rounds.”

She hears Brandt grunt in return and tries not to let her mind wander too much as she moves through the crowd. He was more than capable of taking care of himself, he’d proven that time and time again. And yet after everything that had happened in Mumbai she’s found it hard to reconcile their training with the fact that maybe, just maybe, the close call was one too many.

She would never truly consider giving up any of it -- the missions, the danger, the partnerships. Jane Carter wasn’t a quitter. She had accepted Ethan’s proposition without question and hadn’t hesitated, even when the others had. And yet, as she carefully makes her way along the edge of the party scene, she still finds herself wondering what it all means in the end, what her legacy would be if she did end up in a body bag.

(Probably Brandt writing some stupid eulogy, she figures. Complete with Benji’s high tech coffin, to boot. Jane smirks to herself at the thought.)

A high-pitched whine removes her from her thoughts, bringing her back to the present, and she has only a second to react before Benji’s voice reverberates through her ear.

“Jane, code red. You have got to get out of there, _now_.”

She turns on instinct, reaching down and under her gown to grab the gun hidden in the holster strapped to her leg, whirling around and firing two shots  There are screams, and she’s pretty sure someone has spilled their wine (or maybe it’s blood, goddammit, _it was always so hard to tell_ ) and then she’s fleeing through the party while dodging return fire, taking shelter behind a table that she manages to slide over. Jane breathes out once, reloads her gun, blowing hair out of her eyes before she readies herself to turn and shoot.

“Jesus!” she yells at someone grabs her by the shoulder and flings her backwards. She lands hard on her spine as the shot that she knows would’ve gotten her in the face whizzes past her, but manages to get her gun steady. Before her finger can find the trigger, Brandt’s eyes come into view and his forehead, she notices immediately, is oozing red.

“Thanks for nothing,” she mutters once the realization sinks in. He sticks out a hand, helping her up, and she doesn’t even want to know what trouble he found himself in during the what feels like the ten short minutes they’ve been on watch (they’ll save that for the debriefing).

“We gotta go,” he says urgently, and she grasps his palm as they slip away through a side door. Benji’s waiting for them in a getaway car at the end of the road and halfway down Jane decides _what the hell,_ ripping off her heels, the bottom of her feet pounding against the grass.

“Close call,” Brandt says once they’re settled in the car and have started to maintain a safe distance from the chaos. “Don’t think we’ll be invited back there anytime soon.”

“Pity,” Benji muses from the front seat, and from behind dark glasses. “I rather liked their martinis.”

“You would,” says Brandt as he rips off his suit jacket, which Jane notices is pretty much ruined at this point, exposing a large gash on the side of his torso.

“You’re hurt,” she points out, moving across the seat on instinct and watching the red as it stains his skin, blossoming into large splotches along his light shirt. “What happened back there?”

“Maybe someone _really_ wanted to play twenty questions.”

“William.”

“I hate it when you call me that,” he mumbles, and Jane heaves out a sigh.

“Fine. _Brandt_.” He looks up as she takes a cloth to his bloodied face, watching his eyes. She won’t ask, because it’s not the right time -- she’ll wait until later, when they have a moment to breathe, when he can give the full details she knows he’ll have to give Ethan anyway. For now, she’ll accept being in the dark, and she’ll deal with it, because she trusts him.

She needs to trust him, because she can only open up so much, and she doesn’t have anyone else.

“Don’t ever do something like that again, okay?”

Brandt smiles, one half of his mouth rising as she pulls away. “Only if you promise to keep saving my life.”

“Technically, you saved _me_ this time,” she points out. “Making us even. That guy would have blown off my head if you hadn’t been there.”

“Yeah, but I’m still the one you have to patch up,” he responds, closing his eyes. “Come on, Carter. Just promise me you’ll get my back for awhile. Otherwise I have to rely on Benji here to make sure I don’t die.”

“I’d watch your mouth or you’ll be ejected from this car,” Benji warns from the front seat, and Jane drops her hand to Brandt’s leg, squeezing her fingers around his knee.

“You’re asking me to make sure I stay?”

Brandt stays silent, as if he needs to think about if his words meant what she thinks they meant, and then nods. Jane smiles.

“Okay,” she agrees after a pause. “I think I can do that.”


End file.
